Month: June 2005

Pass the Badger

elvis7 Comments

I just corrupted a young mind with the evil hypnotic badger badger badger…. So I tried, at lunch today to explain badger badger badger and simply could not.



I just corrupted a young mind with the evil hypnotic badger badger badger. Olivia always asks why I say “Oh, it’s a snake” whenever she says anything about snakes.

So I tried, at lunch today to explain badger badger badger and simply could not. So tonight, I played it for her.

Now, she’s wandering around the house saying “Mushroom, mushroom!” and “It’s a snake, ohh, it’s a snake!”

My work here is done. At least until I give her Bananna Phone.

Thanks, Brutha Ray. I’m needin’ a fresh book. You just sent me the one. Favor back at you, now that I have your mailing address!

Bullshit!

elvis3 Comments

You know, if you’re not watching Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT!, you need to be. This is both some of the best entertainment, and some of the best information on teevee.

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You know, if you’re not watching Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT!, you need to be.

This is both some of the best entertainment, and some of the best information on teevee.

Not every episode is brilliant. Sometimes they work a little hard to convince us that something is crap, particularly in the more recent episodes. But damn, some of these, like the one I watched tonight about Talkingt to the Dead, are simply fantastic, skewering things that simply scream out to be skewered.

Set your TiVos. But save up a few, I always want to watch two or three in a row. One bullshit isn’t enough.

Pardon my typos. There was a bottle of Toasted Head involved. I love you though. Really.

Happy birthday, Pac-Man!

elvis9 Comments

Twenty Five years ago, Pac-man was born.

Twenty Five years ago, Pac-man was born.

Boing Boing: Happy birthday, Pac-Man!:

I had a funny conversation with my buddy Chris (Papa Christo) the other day. He had a shirt on that said Tower Records Campbell – 30 year anniversary, with a date. And I looked at that date, and said, god dude, we worked there twenty five years ago.

Chris and I met at Tower, and I should do a whole entry about that. But we worked nights, in the posters/plants/bongs store. We both worked the closing shift, 3:30-midnight. And you know, we were nineteen, twenty, working nights, so what we did most nights on our ‘lunch’ break was drink. Sometimes we’d hit the mexican place, and drink shots and eat nachos. But more often, it was a burger and pizza place called “The Garret”

Now, that was where, when I was a younger teen, I played my first game of Pong, and then later a game no one remembers called Flim-Flam. But one day, they got this new game; a table-top thing called pac man. And it was perfect; we’d get a couple pitchers of cheap beer, a couple burgers, and he’d drink while I played, I’d drink while he played.

We’d drink and play for an hour, and like the old WKRP episode, we’d get better with each beer, for a while. But then we’d start getting worse with each beer, about the time lunch was up.

And Chris and I would wobble back across the street and take over running cash registers, selling bongs and pipes and scales, posters of Peter Frampton and Farrah Fawcett-Majors.

How can this be twenty-five years ago? Damn, we were young.

Sunny with a chance of Bad Santa

elvis7 Comments

Last year we had a small but excellent showing of filthy holiday stories I like to call Bad Bad Santa. I’m just sick enough to go back and do it again.

This is what you want call an early warning.

Last year we had a small but excellent showing of filthy holiday stories I like to call Bad Bad Santa.

I’m just sick enough to go back and do it again. So put your dirty thinking caps on.

Basically, there are few rules — stories need to be 1) dirty, 2) holiday themed. You can take on the jolly old elf like the rest of us did last time, you can besmirch Rudolph, Frosty, that wicked old Mrs Claus, the Grinch, even little Cindy Lou Who. Or you can take on another holiday and do unto the Easter Bunny or Cupid, or a holiday mashup like Jack Skelington and his crew.

Whatever.

Think on it. Let inspiration strike.

I’ll put out an official call later this summer and put up a drop box of some sort to collect them. Stories remain the author’s, I’m just gonna collect ’em up and feature the best ones.

Is that for my ears?

elvis3 Comments

Olivia was in teh office with me, I suspect up to her eyeballs in her playmobile obsession…. And I turn to say something to olivia, and the next song in my iTunes library starts playing.

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Last night I was downloading something or other, some sample of an artist I’ve now forgotten.

Olivia was in the office with me, I suspect up to her eyeballs in her playmobile obsession.

So I start up this sample in iTunes, and it plays, and isn’t interesting in any way. And I turn to say something to olivia, and the next song in my iTunes library starts playing. I have this up pretty loud.

And this is the next song. (That link isn’t work safe).

It’s the dirty-words-only version of ‘Fuck tha Police’ from NWA’s Straight Outta Compton.

I thought Olivia’s head was gonna explode.

IS THAT FOR MY EARS? she demanded.

“No honey, that played by mistake.”

“Why would you have that,” she asked, sounding near panic.

I explained what it was a joke, everything but the bad words edited out. And I felt like that moment in Alice’s Restaurant where he says “…and creatin’ a nuisance, and they all moved back to me there on the group W bench…” when I told her it was to make of point about how much some bands use that sort of language. And that made it all ok, as if she was then able to say to herself oh, it’s a lesson.

I don’t know this kid sometimes. I asked her if she wanted to hear it again, and she paled and said NO! But someday she’s gonna understand the power of that language.

Gimme your body, Gimme your mind

elvis14 Comments

I had one of those weekends where I think about killing off my blog, because I am in a place where rage and pain and frustration mount, and I can’t seem to use the one therapy available to me — writing. This is where a private journal is better; yet I seem unable to write without an audience.

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Gimme your body
Gimme your mind
Open your heart
Pull down the blind

Gimme your love gimme it all
Gimme in the kitchen gimme in the hall

Art for arts sake
Money for Gods sake
Art for Arts sake
Money for Gods sake

I had one of those weekends where I think about killing off my blog, because I am in a place where rage and pain and frustration mount, and I can’t seem to use the one therapy available to me — writing.

This is where a private journal is better; yet I seem unable to write without an audience. As much as I belive in art for art’s sake I can’t seem to practice it, I need to send my words off to someone to have them worth saying.

Blogging is a double-edged sword. We send our words into the vast semi-permenant public record that is the internet, but eventually, we all must deal with the fact that from the click of the ‘publish’ button, our thoughts and deeds are public, and can, possibly, be tracked back. Even anonymous bloggers know this; look at Waiter Rant, who had to take his ‘tip jar’ down because it might compromise his anonymity.

Those of us who blog under a known name, real or trackable back to us, invariably confront the fact that people we know may read us. Family, friends, work, parents.

My mother reads this space. Eventually, my daughter will find it, as soon as she gets bored googling up obscure playmobile toys and decides to google daddy.

The audience constrains us. Things I might say, behind a curtain of anonymity with no names or dates, now, ever and always, I must think about. Who might this hurt? Is this someone’s secret? Am I free to speak? And this becomes a spiral, tighter and tighter, til sometimes I cannot move my fingers, trapped in some fugue state, paralyzed by thought and unable to create.

Days like this, I think, shut it down, it’s past it’s expiration date.

Fortunately, when I think this, I don’t reach for the delete key. At best I think ‘take it down’ and move the published files aside. The database that contains all this work, and that of other bloggers, is safe, and backed up. So if I again succumb to the desire to make it go away, the few ounces of treasure in all this won’t cease to be.

But I stare at ecto‘s compose window, more and more as time goes by, with empty, impotent frustration, my words filtered down to nothing. I post links and pictures and funny quips, meaningless film reviews, because I feel I must say something.

Mute frustration rules my life in many ways. Words I cannot speak. My words become the match that ignites a tinderbox of trouble. Yet words are the life-blood of me, my interface to the world, my only effective tool to understand the universe. I think in language. I often think in dialog.

I am trapped in my own head, unable to break free, the tools that helped now, I fear, hurt. There is so much I want to say, and so little I can.

What a parent must endure

elvis6 Comments

How is it the same guy can make Desperado, Sin City, and Shark Boy and Lava Girl?It’s what you gotta do sometimes when you’re a parent…. When this happens, you gotta choose from what’s on. Sometimes there’s the unexpected winner.

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How is it the same guy can make Desperado, Sin City, and Shark Boy and Lava Girl?

It’s what you gotta do sometimes when you’re a parent. You go to movies because this weekend, you need something to do with the kids, not because there’s something brilliant playing that you gotta see. When this happens, you gotta choose from what’s on.

Sometimes there’s the unexpected winner. I mean, who’d have though the Wild Thornberries movie would be a charming little flick? Sometimes you get Madagascar, funny, but not something to seek out unless you need a kid flick.

And sometimes you get Shark Boy and Lava Girl.

Let’s start with — my god what a headache I have. Hasn’t 3D gotten better? It took a can of PimpJuice (also known as PJ Tight, the #1 Hip Hop Energy Drink!) to get that under control.

I wanted to like this movie. I was willing to laugh with it when the jokes were terrible and the dialog sounded like written by Rodriguez seven-year-old son (Who’s credited with ‘story by’). I was even willing to find the low-grade CGI effects charming.

But god. It’s boring. Boring, boring, boring. The kind of boring where you wait for a bad joke to groan at because it relives the boredom.

Ok, fine. The kids liked it. They’re the target audience. But damn, you know, I want a director who’s as talented as Rodriguez to have a little, just a little more judgement and self-restraint.

So what’s good about it? Very little. There are some clever creatures, something Rodriguez has a gift for (plug dogs, or something like that, hell-hounds made of electrical wires with plugs for heads), funny casting (Kristin Davis of Sex and the City as Mom, and David Arquette as Dad, looking eerily like Rodriguez himself). But the the only thing that kept me entertained through it was the delightfully pink-haired Taylor Dooley as Lava Girl. She’s cute as a button, and I’m setting my watch for how old she has be for, well, you know. Hell, 2011? Ah. Ok. I’m hoping she keeps the pink hair, I tell ya.

Sigh. When does Howl’s Moving Castle open? There’s one I’ll line up for.